The World Cup has seen a feast of football in the Gulf, with 32 of the top international teams playing 64 games before the golden trophy is finally lifted at the Lusail Stadium on December 18.
But international football made its debut in the UAE over 60 years earlier, when England — or at least the crew of a Royal Navy frigate — took on a scratch side from Abu Dhabi that included three sheikhs.
The pitch for the friendly match was an area of hard sand used for holiday celebrations next to Qasr Al Hosn, and, although the exact score is not recorded, the Abu Dhabi team emerged clear winners.
The above photo shows the half time break during the game, in February 1955, with both sides mingling and the sailors in their uniforms, which included navy caps.
It was taken by Susan Hillyard, whose husband Tim was part of the Abu Dhabi team and in charge of Abu Dhabi Marine Area’s off-shore oil exploration effort at the time.
Mr Hillyard, who had played football at Oxford University, joined two Pakistani brothers who were looking for work as cooks, along with three young sheikhs, who brought several tribesman to make up the numbers for Abu Dhabi.
The sheikhs, Mrs Hillyard recorded in her book Before the Oil, had seen football played at the Royal Air Force base in Sharjah and explained the rules to the others.
A pre-match meal was held on HMS Owen. Mrs Hillyard wrote: “Whether by luck, the lunch, or the barefoot agility … of the locals, the Abu Dhabians beat the heavily booted ‘Owens’ soundly.”
The match did have a more serious purpose.
HMS Owen had been converted to a survey ship after the Second World War, and was in the region to map the Arabian Gulf in 1955.
Among the crew was a doctor, and the arrival of the ship on a courtesy visit to Abu Dhabi was a chance for him to examine and diagnose medical problems in the town, which had no health facilities at the time.
To bring people together, an impromptu sports day was arranged, with the football match just one highlight.
A target shooting contest with rifles was followed by archery, with Sheikh Zayed, who was visiting from Al Ain, hitting the bullseye with his arrow at the second attempt.
Other activities included long jump and a tug of war between six sailors and 12 local men. Mrs Hillyard said it soon turned into a contest between most of Abu Dhabi and the entire ship’s company.
“When there was no more room on the rope, the contestants hung on to each other’s waists until all collapsed laughing on the ground,” she wrote.
“The women stood in the background enjoying it all.”
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
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MATCH INFO
Final: England v South Africa, Saturday, 1pm
Specs
Engine: Electric motor generating 54.2kWh (Cooper SE and Aceman SE), 64.6kW (Countryman All4 SE)
Power: 218hp (Cooper and Aceman), 313hp (Countryman)
Torque: 330Nm (Cooper and Aceman), 494Nm (Countryman)
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh158,000 (Cooper), Dh168,000 (Aceman), Dh190,000 (Countryman)
Gothia Cup 2025
4,872 matches
1,942 teams
116 pitches
76 nations
26 UAE teams
15 Lebanese teams
2 Kuwaiti teams
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The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
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PULITZER PRIZE 2020 WINNERS
JOURNALISM
Public Service
Anchorage Daily News in collaboration with ProPublica
Breaking News Reporting
Staff of The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky.
Investigative Reporting
Brian M. Rosenthal of The New York Times
Explanatory Reporting
Staff of The Washington Post
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Staff of The Baltimore Sun
National Reporting
T. Christian Miller, Megan Rose and Robert Faturechi of ProPublica
and
Dominic Gates, Steve Miletich, Mike Baker and Lewis Kamb of The Seattle Times
International Reporting
Staff of The New York Times
Feature Writing
Ben Taub of The New Yorker
Commentary
Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times
Criticism
Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times
Editorial Writing
Jeffery Gerritt of the Palestine (Tx.) Herald-Press
Editorial Cartooning
Barry Blitt, contributor, The New Yorker
Breaking News Photography
Photography Staff of Reuters
Feature Photography
Channi Anand, Mukhtar Khan and Dar Yasin of the Associated Press
Audio Reporting
Staff of This American Life with Molly O’Toole of the Los Angeles Times and Emily Green, freelancer, Vice News for “The Out Crowd”
LETTERS AND DRAMA
Fiction
"The Nickel Boys" by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
Drama
"A Strange Loop" by Michael R. Jackson
History
"Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America" by W. Caleb McDaniel (Oxford University Press)
Biography
"Sontag: Her Life and Work" by Benjamin Moser (Ecco/HarperCollins)
Poetry
"The Tradition" by Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press)
General Nonfiction
"The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care" by Anne Boyer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
and
"The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America" by Greg Grandin (Metropolitan Books)
Music
"The Central Park Five" by Anthony Davis, premiered by Long Beach Opera on June 15, 2019
Special Citation
Ida B. Wells
Six large-scale objects on show
- Concrete wall and windows from the now demolished Robin Hood Gardens housing estate in Poplar
- The 17th Century Agra Colonnade, from the bathhouse of the fort of Agra in India
- A stagecloth for The Ballet Russes that is 10m high – the largest Picasso in the world
- Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1930s Kaufmann Office
- A full-scale Frankfurt Kitchen designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, which transformed kitchen design in the 20th century
- Torrijos Palace dome
BIGGEST CYBER SECURITY INCIDENTS IN RECENT TIMES
SolarWinds supply chain attack: Came to light in December 2020 but had taken root for several months, compromising major tech companies, governments and its entities
Microsoft Exchange server exploitation: March 2021; attackers used a vulnerability to steal emails
Kaseya attack: July 2021; ransomware hit perpetrated REvil, resulting in severe downtime for more than 1,000 companies
Log4j breach: December 2021; attackers exploited the Java-written code to inflitrate businesses and governments
Tearful appearance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday.
Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
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Match info
Australia 580
Pakistan 240 and 335
Result: Australia win by an innings and five runs
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